Matt D's Blog

Hi everyone..In the process of moving to shared hosting…please bear with me as I get files back online that should be.

-Matt

P.S. I’m on dialup for the time being…that’s one of the reasons the site went down, my cable is down.

Two words: See it.

GREAT movie…Hilarious, full of action, moves along well…One of the better movies I’ve seen in a while.

Don’t just sit there..GO. Now.

Oh. Thanks for all the fish.


P.S. Prior reading not required.

Today at 4 PM, I finally got my car back after 32 days of being in the shop…The car looks flawless….It seems like the car turns easier to the right, but if I remember, it always used to do that (it’s been so long since I really drove it cause of the winter and all ), but other than that, and needing the front wheel balanced, it seems to be ok…I have a couple pics which I have to get off of the camera…But this thing shines like it did when it came from the factory..Because it is nicer then when I got the car…it shines THAT much. Needless to say, this did not come without a price - I was constantly frustrated by the owner saying he’d call me, and never did, and it turned out to be much more than I anticipated…Total bill $2800…But I don’t care. It’s gonna be rough for a while, but I can do it.

Overall…Very happy.

Well, the LS is at David Ford being fixed for a coolant leak problem - the car overheated (barely - caught it as I was pulling into a gas station), and the Cobra will be home on Tuesday most likely. So while we’re carless right now, by the end of the week it should be good.

Talked with Phil from PM collision today, and was not too happy. I need some front suspension parts, and everything is going to total around $2000. Now that wouldn’t be that big of a deal - except he doesn’t take credit cards. Thankfully, it’ll be hard, but not impossible to do.

Installing all three of these on Windows 2000 was an interesting task to say the least. MySQL is definately the leader in terms of speed, as long as you give it enough memory. But, I wouldn’t put anything on it that you really need - I lost data once in the day that I was messing with it…Not a good sign. Postgres is not much slower than the transaction-capable table type in MySQL, but a heck of a lot more stable than MySQL, in my opinion and from my observations, of course. Didn’t even get to work with MS SQL, but if I can deal with Postgres, I usually do. Interesting nonetheless. I did learn that MySQL had a bulk loader, which I was unaware of. But it’s still not grown up - all the data is chunked into files, with databases mixing with each other. Not good. Each database should have it’s own set of files, like “Real” databases do. I was messing with these, because I got my datalog analysis program to work on Windows using Apache, PHP, and both MySQL and PostgreSQL in Windows…Very cool stuff. I’m gonna write a C++ program, a native Windows app, so that the process becomes easier though…

After dropping off the car, I went to the Auto show with Ben and a few other friends, as well as Rich. The show was ok, there were a LOT of people there. I will eventually have some pictures up (I only took about 20 or so). The Shelby Cobra (the PRODUCTION one) will be pretty cool - 5.4L 4V, supercharged, in the new body style. Definately cool looking. They also had some 400 HP truck, this time a real 4WD one though! They had the Shelby GR-1 concept, which was interesting (and odd looking in chrome). Overall though, not too much from other manufacturers, more of the same from last year.

Today I brought my car to PM Collision in Tuckahoe, NY. I’m very happy to finally have the car somewhere where it will get fixed. It was a nice day thankfully, so the drive there was uneventful - even though I had my bumper sticking out of the passenger window lol. Will find out soon how much it is.

I understand why telco technicians are paid a good bit - it’s a real pain to run wires inside a wall. I tried replacing the wiring that connected the kitchen extension to the phone line, and what a mess. I tried just attaching the new wire to the old, but they came apart, and down came the original wire from the wall. Thankfully, it was easy enough to run it through the wall, and down the edge (this is in the basement stairway), and replace the wire. Now it’s a little cleaner than before, and it’s nice to only have 1 length of wire, instead of 3 segments as it was before.

I hate that when cars are designed, they don’t take maintainance into consideration at all…I wanted to look under a cover today to see something, but of the 6 bolts holding the cover on, 2 of them are in a place that it’s nearly impossible to take out without removing a bunch of other stuff, while the other 4 are pretty easy. Oh well. I need a thinner ratchet (ie, no adapters) and that might give me enough room.

There was a power outage last night – I don’t know what the deal is with this neighborhood, it’s not that reliable. I could see something from my grandmother’s window, but it wasn’t on our street. It apparently affected a pretty big area, but they fixed it in like 3 hours, which isn’t that bad I guess.

I hate peoeple who insist on blasting their portable music player in the morning - not everyone has an interest in the same music as you do…not only that, this idiot is playing the same song over and over. Ugh.

One must love the nature of weather forecasting. On Sunday night (Feb. 20th), the weather channel said that it was going to start snowing around 12 AM, and deliver around 8 inches of snow. Now I had planned on helping out Ben with his car, so I was going to be out a few hours, but I knew I’d be home by 12. Well, it turns out that the weather channel was wrong.
It start snowing around 8:45 or 9 PM. Much earlier than anticipated. Unfortunately, we were at one of Ben’s friend’s house at the moment when someone said to us that it was snowing outside. At this point we both said, “we gotta go.” He has a Mustang GT with drag racing tires on the back - ie, excellent traction in warm weather or if they’re heated up, but 0 traction in cold situations. So we both wanted to get home quickly, as I had taken out the Cobra, again thinking that I’d be home in time. So we leave, and make it back to Ben’s house without any real incident. We get to his house, I get my stuff together, and get on my way. I get through Eastchester no problem, with some minor slipping down one of the hills, but that was only for a couple of seconds. I pass over Central Ave. no problem. Driving on Tuckahoe Rd. wasn’t a problem. I was able to make it UP Roberts Ave no problem, but that’s where the problems started. Going DOWN the hill was scary.
It was nearly impossible to slow odwn, the brakes were useless. Just kept it in 1st gear and went down the hill slowly. Made it down the hill, and across tht way to the next main street. I turn left onto it, and I’m moving along at around 20 MPH max, because thats about as fast as I can go, and this is with traction control keeping me in a straight line. I had to pull over to the side of the road because some idiot was behind me going like 40, and was trying to pass me. People wonder why there are so many accidents between drivers - most of them have no clue that just because they can get through the snow (this person was in car, btw, not a truck), does not mean everyone can. In any case, I attempted to get back on the road, and could not. I had to turn traction control off, and slide my way back onto the road.
I then turned into another street at which point I was not able to stop for the stop sign - I had to go through it and make the turn right away. That was scary event number 2. I slowly made my way down the hill, and was ok until it came time to turn into my street - I missed the turn. I ended up half on my street and half on the trail thats by it. So I turned back onto the hill going down, made the first curve to the left ok, but then I tried to slow down, and paniced. I was not able to turn to the right to get down the hill, and I hit the guard rail by 710. I thought for sure my driver side was demolished..but my ride was not over yet. I then bounced off of the guard rail, and slid toward the right side of the street. I then ran over the stop sign, and finally came to a stop by the bus stop on the street at the bottom of the hill.
I got out, screaming and cursing, and then looked at the side of the car and said “Oh.” The car has paint scratches on the side of it, and it doesn’t look to go any further than the front 1/4 panel. The driver side door looks ok, and the back is fine. Then I moved around front. “Oh..” not so good. The stop sign broke my front bumper cover, and I literally ran over the sign. So there’s probably some damage underneath the car - my uncle thinks there might be damage to the steering rack. The front driver side rim was also heavily damaged, but overall the car came out pretty good, and I wasn’t hurt. So as I’ve been saying to friends - it could have been much worse.
The plan is to replace the bumper cover, two rims, and steering rack, and then to get the car to a body shop to be fixed up. I found a good price on the wheels, the steering rack doesn’t seem so bad, and I’m getting a price from two sources on the bumper cover. The only real variable is labor charges for the body work - I have no idea how much that will be.

Here’s a couple of pictures:

<IMG SRC=/matt_car/accident/dscf1900.jpg ALT=”Front of Car”>

<IMG SRC=/matt_car/accident/dscf1910.jpg ALT=”Front Fender”>

My second attempt at a relationship has unfortunately come to a halt. Things were not working out between Jay and I, and so we decided to end our relationship. I had a good time, and we broke up on decent terms, but he’s taking it hard. We’re gonna spend some time completely away from each other before interacting in a friend context. I wish him luck in finding someone to be with. He wrote me a long letter, gave me a copy of the final version of one of his screenplays, and a nice drawing of myself holding my cousin Samantha in the hospital. It was very nice of him to do that.

As of today, I move full time to the new office full time. The old office will be left without anyone inhabiting it until March, at which point we lose the lease on the place. At Viewpoint, some things are the same, some things are very different. First of all, things are much more relaxed at Unicast. Everything has a procedure at Viewpoint of how to go about doing something. The people are similar, but their entire development and QA departments like to work in low light. I have a desk lamp on my desk so I don’t go blind lol. The people have a similar work ethic though - nobody is in at the time they’;re supposed to be, perhaps this is why they insist you stay late. On paper, it’s a 35 hr work week - 9-5…But they expect you to be there from 9-6. We’ll see how long 6 PM nights last - I hate getting home at 7. Otherwise, I’m doing similar things to what I was doing at Unicast.